3 ms·
> If there's one person who knows about [thing] it's him so naturally he knows how to present relevant subject matter One lesson (no pun intended) of the acad
by mananaysiempre 3y ago
> If there's one person who knows about [thing] it's him so naturally he knows how to present relevant subject matter
One lesson (no pun intended) of the academic environment is that no, it doesn’t work that way. Some people are subject-matter experts, some are brilliant expositors, but while you can’t be a good expositor without a decent knowledge of the subject matter, you absolutely can be a world-leading scientist and at the same time completely rubbish at explaining your ideas. (Some areas are better at making use of such people than others.)
Good exposition deserves additional credit on top of subject expertise, is what I’m trying to say.
- david-gpu 3y agoI agree, it is a different skillset. This also means that you will often find excellent easily digestible expositions of ideas from people who don't have a good grasp of the subject matter, which is problematic.
- npunt 3y agoYeah the 'good at explaining / doesn't understand' part of the 2x2 is an entire genre on twitter.
- prmoustache 3y agoHacker News. Why would you agree when you can argue? <-- official subtitle.
- meepmorp 3y agoI'm pretty sure that's not the official subtitle
- archon810 3y agoCan you please provide three sources supporting your counter argument?
- mananaysiempre 3y agoI mean, you’re not wrong :P even if I’d probably put this as: Why not stay silent if you don’t have anything to add? This particular topic, though, I do feel more strongly about than most I comment on here. Technical exposition is an underappreciated art, and in many places an unrewarded one. How many star technical writers can you name, compared to star programmers? How much effort does writing a good review paper take, compared to an incremental research advance, and how much harder is it to publish one? Halmos, one of the best expositors of (non-popular!) mathematics in at least a generation, quotes an anonymous mathematician in How to write mathematics: “All of us, I think, feel secretly that if we but bothered we could be really first-rate expositors”; the mathematician’s point being that nothing could be further from the truth. (Incidentally, it’s a bit startling how well Halmos’s principles map to the ones in Vonnegut’s How to write with style.) I’m sensitive about this in part because I myself want to be good at exposition and never feel that I actually am. Still, personal hangups aside, if the guy is an expert and can communicate, with no tradeoff on either side, that’s rare enough—and must have needed work enough—that it should be celebrated.
- 3seashells 3y agoAnd I thought it was hit on the head lessons here. And I don't want to argue about that..